Elemental
by Rjalker
Summary: Abigail's dreams never change, but they never stay the same, either.


Abigail dreamed of fire.

It crawled along her skin and burned her insides to ash until the hand she lifted to her torn throat was nothing more than blackened flesh and pale bone.

The pain tore her mind to shreds. In her dreams, her screams never rose above a rasping whisper no matter how hard she tried.

In the waking world, her screams were just as useless. No one could hear her. No one would hear her.

Even in her dreams, she knew that no one was going to save her.

When she was finally able to wake up, all she could do was clutch Senteron to her chest and choke back her sobs.

It was the times like this that she couldn't deny what she was anymore. Couldn't deny what she had done.

The screams of those she had killed tore at her with tree-branch claws as she ran, fleeing from what she had done.

They cut her skin and pulled at her hair. The explosion of bullets shattered the air and deafened her bleeding ears.

It was her father that lit the fire.

He poured gasoline over her while she choked on the fumes, and smiled sadly when she stumbled away from him in horror.

"You see?" His voice followed her, always right next to her ears even as cuts from the vicious branches filled them with blood. "You see?"

You see? You see? You see?

Do you see how, Abigail?  
You see?

She ran until the gasoline she left behind with every step caught up with her, and ignighted against her feet.

It burned away her clothes, and began eating away at her skin within moments.

Then her hair caught fire, and the sparks burned down the entire forest as she whispered her useless screams for help that wouldn't come.

* * *

Freddie would sit with her for hours, patiently teaching her the signs that would be her only form of communication until-if-her vocal cords healed.

Freddie's hair looked like fire, though, and she flinched away from the sight of it haloed against the sunlight streaming in from the window, and couldn't explain why when the woman grew concerned.

"My brother was born deaf." Freddie explained, changing he subject to keep Abigail calm, "He's better at this than I am. Maybe he could come visit, some day, if you wanted to learn from him."

Abigail said nothing, though, and they continued their lessons in silence.

* * *

After Alana Bloom came to visit her, she dreamed of water.

The fire had reduced her to ashes, and the pain sent her waking body trembling and clutching for her daemon.

And then the water came, pouring up from the ground, filled with darkness, and choking her burned lungs.

Somehow, after she was nothing more than a charred skeleton, her lungs remained, bruising her ribs as she struggled for air.

Like help, she knew that the air wouldn't reach her as he water rose above her head and flooded the world.

She tried to swim, but hands-ANTLERS-held her ankles and hands, trapping her at the bottom of the abyss as even the sun was finally swallowed up.

Her screams once more-you see?-turned to gasps for air in her drowning lungs and torn throat, and she awoke to a pillow soaked with tears, and a lump in her throat that sent her hyperventilating in a terrifying panic attack until one of the nurses gave her a tranquilizer after several failed attempts to calm her.

* * *

Alana's daemon never left her shoulder, his wings fluttering open and closed again every few moments. Blue, red, blue, red, blue, red, blue, red.

You see?

She closed her eyes and looked away when the sight made her dizzy.

"The nurse told me what happens last night." Alana said softly, then, into the silence that met her words, and even softer, "Do you want to talk about it?"

Her gaze was concerned, gentle, undemanding.

Abigail sucked in a breath to steady herself, and Senteron clutched at a strand of her hair.

I have nightmares. She wrote out with pen and paper, I dream of blood.

* * *

You see? You see? You see?

* * *

Will Graham gave her a scarf the first time he visited her. It was blue, and orange, and brown.

"The colors of autumn." He explained, his leopard watching with her golden eyes, "The time for old things to fall away."

She tried it on. It was soft against her throat, and hid her scar from the world. Senteron was able to move down from her shoulders to her arms, and she buried her face against his. Thank you, she wanted to say, but her voice was ruined.

He understood, though, and smiled. His leopard flicked one of her ears.

She dreamed of earth, after that.

The water swallowed up the sun, and the hands (antlers) began to drag her down.

You see?

Down, down into the dirt their blood had stained. Into the earth they had never returned to. There were no coffins for them. Everything was used. You had to honor them, otherwise, it was just murder.

There was no honoring her. It couldn't be done. She was blackened to the core. All that remained were her lungs, gasping in the water for air.

Inch by inch, she was dragged down and into the hungry earth until she couldn't see, and dirt poured down her throat and into her lungs, choking the water from them and suffocating her in agony as the weight of the world crushed her within its jaws.

She awoke in the middle of the night, sobbing uncontrollably.

* * *

I dream of death, she whispered brokenly to Will and his leopard in silence, in stillness, in the clutch of her hands around her chest and daemon, I dream of fear.

* * *

When Hannibal Lecter sat across from her with his owl upon his shoulder in the blade of sunlight streaming in through the window, she dreamed of air.

* * *

The earth crumbled away from her starting at the ends of the world, inch by inch, until nothing was left.

Her lungs were empty, and there was nothing she could do to fill them.

Her voice was gone, and she couldn't even whisper.

Eventually, her bones began to crumble, too. Cracking and rotting, they faded away from her in whisps of grey dust.

She floated in the white nothingness unable to even feel pain for what seemed like years, time ticking by with every achingly slow second that passed, until she was nothing.

She opened her eyes and stared at the darkness of her room, not even daring to breathe for the fear that she would shatter against the racing of her heart.

* * *

She did not speak to him.

He spoke to her.

"You must dream of your family." He said, softly, sadly, _surely_, "You have lost them, and so quickly gained another." The twist of his mouth was regretful and guilty, the bowing of his daemon's head weighed with sorrow.

She did not speak to him.

He spoke to her.

"Death is a terrible thing, but it can also be great. There is no shame in death, Abigail, no reason to fear it." The hand he laid on her shoulder was gentle and firm.

She did not speak to him.

She avoided his gaze.

He stared at her.

He spoke to her.

"You will understand soon, I think."

His owl gazed unblinkingly at Senteron.

* * *

She didn't sleep, after that. She didn't dream. She didn't close her eyes.

* * *

Freddie was the first one to visit after he left.

With itching eyes and heavy limbs, Abigail struggled to keep up with the lesson she was supposed to be learning.

Freddie saw, of course, that she hadn't slept the night before, and asked her if she wanted to watch TV. The hospital had a room for it, with couches and armchairs and a fireplace.

(Abigail didn't flinch this time, when Freddie's hair like fire was haloed once more in sunlight)

There was no one else in the room, and Abigail turned the TV to a news station.  
And stared with wide eyes and a throat begging for voice.

Even with exhaustion blurring her eyes and focus, she recognized the woman whose picture was being displayed with the headline, **MISSING FBI AGENT FOUND BY LOCAL HIKER.**

Will spoke of her often, Alana had eventually revealed that they were friends, and Jack Crawford had showed Abigail her picture the first and last time Alana had allowed him near her.

Freddie agreed to drive her to the hospital, and convinced one of the nurses that Abigail should be allowed into the room.

Beverly Katz was sitting up in the hospital bed she had been given, and turned to watch as she came in. Her daemon sat on her shoulder, his feathers a faded blue that was almost verging on grey, and one, limp arm lay with the missing hand horridly in view, the skin around the wrist bruised so deeply that it was black. Her face was ashen and downcast.

_Hello_, Abigail signed, when she was close enough for the other woman to see. She knew it was probably useless, but she didn't care. _It's going to be okay..._

It felt like she whispered he words. She wasn't sure why she said them, she didn't even know the woman. But...but she wanted to comfort her, nonetheless.

Maybe it was so she could finally start making up for everything she had done, maybe it was because she felt responsible. It didn't really matter, though.

Beverly turned to face her, her brow furrowed as though she weren't sure what she was looking at. Then she spoke, softly, rapidly, urgently.

"Secrets taken to the grave. Hide it away, hide it away. From red to blue, the silver cannot be honored. Into the ground it goes. Broken pieces, broken visions, broken memories."

The words were whispered like they were starlight, and Senteron clutched desperately at her neck when it felt like the world was going to fall away from them.

But Beverly Katz's eyes were sharp, one hand-her only hand-darted out to grab onto Abigail's arm before she could even think about flinching away, her voice growing quieter, lower, harsher in desperation, "Twists and curves, angles and swerves, shapes of dreams, half remembered. Slip the surly bonds of earth and touch the face of perfection. The duality must be mended. Bridge the gap in between and burn away at the light. The lies. The ramblings a of a madman, lost in the darkness. A tear in the fabric of reality. A crashing star fallen to earth. The children of the one lost will make their own way. The Wendigo's spoiled feast festers in the ground. Rust against iron, scars against skin. Tears in the mind that cannot be healed. Only erased. Shadows suspended on dust. Antler velvet in the wounds. Too close for comfort. The silver cannot be honored, into the ground it goes. Sunlight suspended on blood, pooling on the floor. A phone call. A warning. Nothing for it. The silver cannot be honored. Into the ground it goes. Do not fear the word. _You see?_"

* * *

Hannibal Lecter's car sat in the parking lot when they got back to the hospital, and Abigail felt her heart beginning to pound in fear. Senteron pressed himself to her chest as though to shut out the world.

She turned to Freddie, who watched with concerned eyes as her trembling hands shaped meaning to the scream hiding behind her throat.

Freddie's brow furrowed, and her daemon sitting on the dashboard twitched his ears.  
Then her expression hardened, and she nodded.

She took her phone out, and spoke into it. Abigail recognized Alana's voice on the other end, but couldn't focus enough to figure out the what was being said. Beverly's words were swimming through her head, and making it hard to breathe past the constriction in her lungs.

The sunlight coming in from the window burned against her leg, and she struggled to focus soley on that. But all it did was make her remember the way Hannibal had sat in her room, and she shuddered away from the thought.

It seemed like forever had passed before Hannibal appeared, leaving the building, his daemon perched as ever upon his shoulder, his gaze turned to the ground.

He didn't look at them as he got into his car, but Abigail felt his presense like a blow to the stomach, and she was so tensed when he started his car and drove away that she flinched as though struck when Freddie put a hand on her shoulder.

Freddie helped her get inside, and into one of the chairs in the reception area as she struggled to get her suddenly ragged breathing which had nothing to do with Senteron's desperate hold on her chest under control.

* * *

"He won't come near you." Freddie promised later, after trying to convince her to lay down for a bit because of how tired she looked, "You're safe here, you know that, right?"  
Abigail couldn't even bring herself to nod.

But she didn't sleep that night, and lay awake in her bed in the darkness, curled protectively around her daemon, as her throughts spun like a whirlwind through her head.

None of it made sense. But one thing was only too clear.

Beverly Katz wanted her to stay away from Hannibal Lecter. And she didn't know how, or why, but she knew that she could trust the woman with the macaw daemon. She had never spoken to her before that day, but something deep inside her urged her to heed the woman's words.

So Abigail refused to close her eyes as the night deepened, and Senteron trained his ears to their surroundings as his arms encircled her neck, and his weight rested on her chest. She stared up at the ceiling, tracing patterns in the endless, colorless dots that swirled like water before her eyes.

* * *

Time passed. It might have been minutes, it might have been hours.

* * *

Pain, sharp, in her arm, the bite of a needle, from nowhere. A voice, in her ear. "Sweet dreams, Abigail."

But then she was air, and metal, and bone, and she couldn't even scream.


End file.
